Worse Than Phony

One of the most surprising features of the presidential campaign
has been the transformation of John Edwards from just another
vaguely irritating Democrat
into someone who has become a symbol of just about everything
I find politically loathesome.

And it's not just that he's transparently phony and dishonest.
I'm a big boy, and know a certain amount of that is inevitable.
(Although indications are that, even for a politician, Edwards is
an overachiever in this area.
For today's take on that, see Drew Cline's post
where he put together six different examples of Edwards'
slipperiness. And there's no hint that Drew even needed to
think very hard about it—he got six things off the
top of his head, and stopped not because he couldn't come
up with more, but simply because he'd made his point.)

It's worse than that, I think. Here's an example of
the sort of thing that really
sets my teeth on edge:
Edwards' response in the 9/27 MTV/MySpace
forum, noted both by Jim
Geraghty and James Taranto.
A UNH freshman asked him about what he would do to "help eliminate inner-city
kids [from] partak[ing] in violence." (I know: partaking?
As if "violence" was some sort of free buffet, and the kids were
just grabbing some from the steam table? But never mind …)

In response, Edwards rattles off the standard liberal panaceas
about education, health care, job training, drug rehab,
and eliminating the sentencing disparity between crack and
powder cocaine. About the only single unifying theme around
those solutions is: not a single one has demonstrated effectiveness
in reducing violence. But the painfulness comes before that,
at the beginning of Edwards' answer:

We cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea
that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating —
pretty soon we're not going to have a young African-American male
population in America. They're all going to be in prison or dead.
One of the two.

Geraghty deems this (accurately enough) hyperbolic, and offers
some numbers to counter. Taranto gets closer to the real
problem:

Does Edwards really mean that all young male blacks are criminals?
Or is the idea that the purpose of the criminal justice system as
currently constituted is to imprison young black men regardless of
guilt?

Either view is plainly false. The former would be one of the most
racist statements uttered by a major American politician in the past
40 years; the latter, one of the most irresponsibly demagogic.

Initial gut response: maybe the truth
is somewhere in between: Edwards is 50% racist, 50% demagogue.
Just a guess.

[Update: The MinuteMan also notes Edwards' response; one of his commenters notes:

I wonder just how many in the "black community" will contest this ?
You don't even need any "soft racism" to have "reduced expectations".
It comes for free.

Also a good point.]

But I think a more accurate observation is that we're overanalyzing
a statement that completely lacks sense or substance. And is almost
certainly not meant to: instead it's more of a howling signal
that the utterer is a reliable, earnest member of the pack
(and by the way, is running for Top Dog).
There's no indication that there's any signal buried
in the noise of Edwards' answer, no indication of
any actual thought behind the words.

And, of course, no indication that Edwards gives two toots
about inner-city violence, let alone figuring out policies
to reduce it.

I've quoted Richard Mitchell from his book Less Than Words
Can Say a couple times before, but here he is one more
time. Application to the current case is left to the reader.

Words never fail. We hear them, we read them; they enter into the
mind
and become part of us for as long as we shall live. Who speaks
reason to
his fellow men bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders
thought for all who listen. There must be some minimum allowable
dose of
inanity beyond which the mind cannot remain reasonable.
Irrationality,
like buried chemical waste, sooner or later must seep into all the
tissues of thought.

With respect to that point,
It doesn't help my mood to observe on the video that both the UNH
freshman questioner and the MTV moderator are both nodding
in response to Edwards' answer like cheap bobbleheads.

Pandora Impressions

I'd tried Pandora
briefly a number of years ago.
I dimly remember being unimpressed at that time.
Summary: either Pandora's gotten a lot better, or my standards have gotten
a lot lower.
I was prompted to retry by a recent Steven Levitt post
at the Freakonomics blog.

Briefly, Pandora is an Internet "radio station" that allows you
(once you've established an account) to input some of your favorite
artists or songs; the player then uses software based on
the Music
Genome Project to provide a playlist consisting of songs
that resemble your favorites' musical "DNA."

For example (as I type), Pandora's playing "So Far Away"
by David Gilmour. Hey, it's pretty good! When I ask Pandora
why she's playing the song, she replies:

Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track
because it features mellow rock instrumentation, acoustic rhythm piano,
major key tonality, and many other similarities identified in
the music genome project.

(Apparently I'm a huge fan of major key tonality. I see that a lot
when I ask Pandora for explanations.)

As songs play, you can hit "thumbs up" or "thumbs down"; this allows
Pandora to (if I'm reading their FAQ correctly) fine-tune your
preferences. So—in theory—you can tell Pandora that you like
The Who; judicious use of the thumbs might let you refine that
to Tommy/Quadrophenia/Who's Next-era Who instead
of "early" Who or "dead-Moon" Who.

After listening for a few days, I'm impressed. Pandora plays good stuff
by numerous artists, some of them I've told Pandora about, and
some I've never heard of. And it's particularly impressive when Pandora
"deduces" one of your favorite artists that you haven't told her
about. She's pretty and smart!

As near as I can tell, however, Pandora doesn't make any judgments based
on song lyrics. At least, that's the simplest explanation for
her offering Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle". That might
be listenable—if Harry had ripped out the mawkish lyrics and
sung something else instead. But as it is, approximately two seconds
into the song: Emergency Thumbs Down! Down, I say!

Similarly, Pandora played a Reba McEntire song, which was entirely
fine—until Reba stopped singing, and started talking. You know,
the way country singers sometimes do.
Sorry, Reba; the only musician I allow to yak at me is Van Morrison.
Thumbs Down!

As you can tell, playing with Pandora can be a little bit of fun.

I'm also hoping it will help detect some new artists for me. I used
to rely on FM radio ("The River - 92.5 FM") for this, but ever since
I got a car
player for my iPod, I don't do that any more.

The basic service is free, supported by unobtrusive advertisements
on the web-page player. (You can buy a subscription to be free of
ads, which also allows playback on some cell phones and home audio
gear.) There are "social networking" features for those people who
like to share.

[Update (2007-09-30): I should also mention that, even though Pandora
only advertises support for Windows and MacOS, it wasn't too tough
to make it play nicely with my home Linux box, running Fedora 7.
Although, as installed, Fedora doesn't understand the
license-encumbered MP3 streaming format, or contain a Flash
player, you can follow E-Z instructions here
to remedy those shortcomings.]

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